1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to data processing systems, and in particular to systems and programs for managing email communications in client systems. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to data processing systems, methods and program products, including electronic mail systems, for informing an email message sender and other recipients that an email message has possibly been addressed to or has been sent to an unintended recipient.
2. Description of the Related Art
During the past decade, electronic mail (“e-mail”) has become an indispensable tool for facilitating business and personal communications. Through computer networking systems such as local-area networks (LAN), wide-area networks (WAN), and the world-wide-web (WWW), network users can send and receive notes, messages, and letters to communicate with others who are in the same office or perhaps in other locations across the world. More specifically, one conventional manner of producing and sending an email message is to use an email client program (mail client) which combines the functionality of a text editor with a messaging system.
Delivery is solely dependent upon the email message's destination address. This address is comprised of two distinct and functionally different parts, namely the address name and the domain. The domain function of the address is the functional equivalent of a “zip code” and allows a message to be delivered to a specific mail server that is responsible for receiving and storing mail messages for a number of mail clients. The name portion of the address permits the receiving mail server to correctly store the message for retrieval from the particular mail program of the receiver. Typically, the messages are stored at the receiver's mail server until the receiver's email program requests the messages. Some receiver email programs are designed so the program requests and retrieves mail regularly. As is well known, the email address that is supplied by a message sender must be in particular format for successful transmission. The first part of the address is the recipient's user name, followed by a “@” sign, and then a host name or a domain name which identifies where the recipient has an Internet mail account.
In the conventional transmission of an email message, the sender's email client transmits a message to the sender's outgoing mail server. Before the outgoing mail server can send the message to its destination, it must obtain an actual Internet Protocol (IP) address for the recipient's incoming mail server. In other words, the domain portion of the address must be converted into an IP address. In order to obtain the correct IP address for the requested domain, the outgoing mail server communicates with a domain name server (DNS). The DNS will either respond with a destination IP address for the domain's mail server or it will respond that the domain cannot be found. This is a first type of addressing error that can cause a message to be undeliverable. Once the sender's outgoing mail server receives a valid IP address from the DNS, it can and does transmit the message across the Internet to the recipient's incoming mail server. This incoming mail server must then validate the name in the address field. If the name does not exist within that domain, then the recipient's incoming mail server typically causes an error message to be sent to the sender's incoming mail server to inform the sender that the “person” does not exist at that domain. This is the second type of addressing error that causes a message to be undeliverable. If the recipient's incoming mail server correctly validates the name in the address field of the message, then the message is stored in a specific location until the recipient receives it.
It is a relatively common mistake for a user to forget or misspell a user name, host name, or domain name in an email address for an email communication. If such user name, host name, or domain name is invalid, the error is detected during transmission and an error message is generated to be transmitted back to the sender. However, in some instances, the user may inadvertently or unintentionally provide a valid user name, host/domain name, in which case, the user may never be notified of the error. The email will be transmitted in the usual course from the user's email server, through the domain name server, on to the Internet, and then received by a valid but unintended recipient.
This problem may be partially alleviated by the use of email software applications including an address directory to assist the user in supplying email addresses when creating email communications. The user can generate entries by supplying names, addresses, telephone and facsimile numbers, email addresses, and other pertinent information into a table. The user can later refer to the directory when composing an email communication. Some email software applications incorporate an automatic email address generator, which, when the user provides the first few characters of an email address, suggests a correct corresponding email address from the list that has been preprogrammed into the directory. Although such an email address directory alleviates some of the problems outlined above by loading the recipient address automatically into the email message, such a system does not solve the problem of entering an unintended recipient the first time that an email message is to be sent to a particular addressee. Further complicating the problem, the address directory itself may contain a valid but unintended recipient contact that perpetuates the problem of sending an email message to an unintended recipient repeatedly. Accordingly, there is a need for a method, system and program for automatically generating a warning when a probable unintended recipient is entered into the recipient field of an email message. Further, there is a need for a system, method and program for informing a message sender when a message has been sent to an unintended recipient.